The present invention relates to a method of cracking heavy hydrocarbons into lighter hydrocarbons and a device for carrying out this method.
The invention is in particular applicable in the chemical and power generating industries.
There presently exist several types of cracking methods such as the thermal cracking, the hydrocracking and the catalytic cracking. These methods however exhibit all the inconveniences tied to the difficulty of controlling the reaction, to the excessive consumption of hydrogen and to the necessity of a frequent regeneration of the catalysts.
There is also known from the European patent application publication No. 0 120 625 a method of cracking heavy hydrocarbons into lighter hydrocarbons. The process according to this document exhibits the drawback of requiring a high temperature zone for the formation of free radicals generating species which would participate in the cracking reaction and a zone mechanically separated from the former one and of a lower temperature for the cracking reaction proper.
Therefore the object of the present invention is to provide a method of cracking heavy hydrocarbons into lighter hydrocarbons which does not exhibit the inconveniences of the prior art and which moreover makes it possible to obtain a higher selectivity in light hydrocarbons and better output efficiencies or yields.